


Let's Go to Prison

by softsylvie



Category: Superjail! (Cartoon), Villainous (Cartoon)
Genre: also violence, dark humor ahoy, do not pass go do not collect two hundred dollars, flug is a bad boy who goes to jail, i am opening ten pandora's boxes here i'm sorry, there are no nice things here, this story is filled with psychos, violence and surreal shit probably
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2019-09-04 23:45:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16799437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softsylvie/pseuds/softsylvie
Summary: When Flug is taken captive by a rather different (read: insane) sort of vigilante, a vigilante that doesn't play by the typical rules of heroics, it'll be up to the rest of the Black Hat Organization to bail him out.  Problem is, that might be more dangerous than they realize.Or, if you'd rather: Flug ends up at Superjail and bullshit happens.





	1. New Prisoner Time!

Flug would have been ashamed of himself, if he hadn’t been scared shitless first.

And no, it hadn’t been his usual fare of anxieties knocking like bill collectors in the form of Black Hat, deadlines, deadlines, Black Hat, or – oh, would you look at that – more deadlines.

It had come in the form of the world’s simplest looking robot thundering through the wall to the lab with a crash. Once he’d ducked safely under his workbench to dodge the initial spray of debris, he’d stood to grab a quick look at what he was dealing with. 

He’d been a bit startled, sure, he’d give you that if you grilled him on it. Startled, yes, but scared? Not in that moment, no. Sometimes newer clientele bypassed the complaint extension of the Black Hat Organization hotline and just went for straight up murder. They learned a little later on how _awful_ an idea that was, but villains would be villains, it was one of those little things you signed up for when you worked with them. This hadn’t been Flug’s first rodeo. 

Anyway, Flug’s first impulse had been to laugh at the design. If you were going to build a deadly robot, he’d learned early on at the Academy, the model was half the battle! Presentation wasn’t _everything,_ but it was pretty damn close. Give a robot gleaming red eyes that worked in tandem with its targeting system, give it claws, give it a menacing snarl, for crying out loud! 

A pixelated green smile in a black screen? White plating? The thing looked more like a bulkier version of Demencia’s mp3 player, hovering in the new doorway it had just knocked through Flug’s wall like a poorly aimed wrecking ball. 

What was _with_ that simple, happy little smile, anyway? Was it a _deadly robot,_ or an Atari he hadn’t added to his old collection? Honestly, if someone was a bit of a sucker for old-timey aesthetics, sure, Flug could one hundred percent allow that, but you didn’t send it out to do your _bidding_ unless – _holy shit had that thing just pulled out a crossbow with a flaming chainsaw nocked on the cable?_

Flug had thrown himself over the workbench with a frightened squawk as the chainsaw shrieked over him, lodging itself in the adjacent wall.

“W-what do you _think you’re doing?!_ This is _private property!_ You can’t just—!”

Another chainsaw had narrowly missed his head. 

Yes, yes the robot _very_ much could. 

He’d made a good run for it, honest, he had! Flug had never exactly been track team material, but he liked to think he had a fairly good pace for someone his age, his build. But it was a goddamn robot he was trying to outrun, so, the deck hadn’t exactly been stacked to his favor.

And when the robot had literally thrown his own workbench after him, and blocked his path? Now _that_ hadn’t been fair, at all. Especially when the resulting spill of chemicals had made quite the explosion, propelling him backward with the force of a thrown rag doll. 

Flug could remember he’d cracked his head on _something,_ though he couldn’t remember what. He could only assume 505 caught the tail-end of the ruckus, because he could remember the bear crying out in fear. He could also only assume that 505 hadn’t been much help, there. A fighter, 505 was not. 

He could remember _something_ tightening around his wrist, and then…

Well, that brought Flug to now, he supposed.

Dangling thousands of feet in the air by a single handcuff, hand numb and cold, fingers trembling, his captor above him happily making its way to wherever it was heading. They were headed across the ocean, that much Flug could make out. He smelled the brine, felt the chill of it even before he saw the horizon of dark water stretching all around. Hat Island was likely long out of sight; this thing could move fast, whatever the hell it was.

“W-wha…?! Where are…?!” Flug shot a panicked look up. “Where are we going?! Where are you _taking_ me?! L-Listen, you, I don’t have _time_ to meet fans and I’ve already said I don’t take private commissions anymore! That was clarified on the web site’s FAQ, can your creator not _read?!_ I can’t leave the lab, I can’t leave the house, I’ll get skinned alive if I miss my deadlines, what are you _doing?!_ ” He thrashed, swung like a pendulum, then promptly rethought it. He was thousands of feet high, hitting that water would be like smashing himself against concrete.

Not that this would be a bad alternative to facing Black Hat after missing his next deadline, but still, survival instinct trumped overall.

The robot didn’t answer. It only kept carting him overseas, all pixelated smiles. Over the square bulk of its head, there was the _thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk_ of chopper rotors spinning.

“I’m telling you, right now, you need to take me _back!_ ” Flug cried out. He tried to pull himself up, the better to inspect the cuff sawing into his circulation. “If you don’t take me back, I’m _never_ gonna get the holiday line done by the time it’s due! You have _no idea_ how far you’ve just set me off-schedule!”

He fell short of hauling himself up any further than a few inches. 

The robot kept right on going, smile unfettered. 

And then things got weird.

Flug saw the first ridge of land sailing into view and almost shouted his joy. Yes, good! If he could just get a good look at any land below, maybe he could pin down a location, get his bearings! When they reached their destination, Flug had no short measure of confidence that he could hijack communications _somehow_ and let his employer know what had happened. He might lose some pay, sure, and sleep for the next week would be out of the question, but at least someone _else_ would suffer the brunt of Black Hat’s fury instead of him. He’d settle for that.

His heart fell as they passed the island, a brief little hunk of land inhabited only by… what looked like elephants tromping around on spindly long legs, a horse-headed man serving pizza to an infant the size of a buffalo with a second mouth gnashing in its chest. A second island followed the first, inhabited by a single giant human head standing to like a statue off Easter Island, its eye sockets and mouth populated in kind by even smaller heads. A third island followed, but Flug shut his eyes against it. 

Because what the _hell_ could he have been looking at, if not the aftermath of a concussion? The throb of the goose egg up near his left temple was the only reassurance he had.

Flug cracked an eye open at some point, testing the waters, if you would. 

He saw what looked like a storm rising up, a churning wheel of dark purple clouds. A storm? A hurricane? God, Flug was halfway to hoping so, if it would tear them both down into the water where he wouldn’t have to worry about what came post-rescue. In a bout of morbid intrigue, Flug opened both eyes to watch those clouds as they began to sway, reshape, moving with an eerie precision that the young scientist knew defied nature.

It was yet another giant head that greeted him, a thankfully more welcome sight than the gaping head behind them, but… it was an awful lot like a game Flug used to play as a kid, the one where you had to point out the shapes in the clouds. You had to trace the shape, see, explain it as you went. “That’s a dog! See, those are the ears, that’s the tail…!”

Flug didn’t _have_ to trace the shape this time. 

It was a head, all right, a great purple head crowned with a dapper purple hat, opening a huge purple mouth as if aiming to swallow them both whole. 

A blinding light found Flug shutting his eyes again, trying to blot it out just a second too late. Opening them again, through the spots wheeling fecklessly across his vision, he saw yet another island looming just ahead. The volcano marking its heart dwarfed any evil volcanic lair he’d ever seen. So it was a villain’s HQ after all, but _god_ was the locale weird…

The robot sailed right for the top of the volcano, where Flug half expected to be bound head-to-foot in chains and dangled over lava by some weirdo in a pompadour with a white cat in his lap. Par for the course for these blowhard dickheads who thought that Black Hat owed them the world just because they were bronze card customers.

“Whoever your creator is, they should have read the instruction manual!” Flug snapped, swinging lazily again from the short chain that held him. “ _I_ write those manuals, myself! And I know for a _fact_ that I write them as clearly as possible, I idiot-proof them! And if your boss couldn’t bone up on the return policy before buying, that’s _their_ problem! I don’t have time for—”

He was cut off rather promptly by freefalling thousands of feet to his own death as the chain severed.

Flug windmilled both arms the entire way, screaming as the rock face of the volcano leaped up to greet him. This was it. This was how he died. Jettisoned into a bed of jagged rocks on the face of a mountain in the middle of Salvador Dali’s latest pizza nightmare, all because someone couldn’t be bothered to read the goddamn manual, or some other such thing.

Except the rock wall began to shudder open with a quake that drowned out Flug’s screams, and an enormous wooden cuckoo bird the size of a mansion leaped out at him with its beak snapping with hungry impatience. Flug screamed the whole way down its gullet, both arms up around himself as the beak snapped shut with a clank. 

At this point, death would have been welcome.

***

The Warden of Superjail was a busy, busy man. 

He made it _look_ easy, sure, boogying along to his own beat patrolling the precincts and listening to Jared whine about _money_ and _ethics_ and _oh god, I don’t know if I can crunch these numbers, sir,_ but the Warden’s job was a demanding one indeed! Under the cool veneer he kept under the brim of that purple top hat, through the sunny vision of those yellow glasses, he was met by the constant challenge of _boundaries._

Yes, there were plenty of kinked corkscrews, deadly dead-ends, and harrowing loop-de-loops muraled in blood stains. Yes, there were bodies flung along blades and into the mouths of monsters and strung up like Christmas presents in the barbed wire. Plenty of that!

But the Warden was never content with _any_ status quo, his own included. What good would Superjail be if it was the _same old thing_ every day? Even violence had its own bar to exceed, not many people knew that, content as they were to let things march on in boring lines within boring corners that made the Warden’s fingers _itch._

Maybe watching an inmate get skinned alive was a better alternative to all those lines and corners and sterile gray bricks and _routines,_ but even _that_ got boring after a while.

So! The Warden was keeping to his office for the day, seeing to the best way of resolving this matter!

Shut up, making an exquisite diorama of his wedding with Alice was as valid a method as any. Creative endeavors greased the wheels and readied the way for inspiration, everyone knew that!

They would be wed in an esteemed chapel in a glorious ceremony, a fine lady like Alice deserved that much! She would stand where the entire _world_ could see that luscious fiery hair, the powerful sculpt of her muscles through her dress, just how _ravishing_ she was! And the colors, if Warden had a say in it, would be _rainbow_ and purple. The cake would be ice cream, of course, because who the _hell_ would get anything else on such an occasion?

The haze of imagined romance was shrilly broken like a ship on the rocks by the clang of his office alarm. Wincing, the Warden barely missed knocking over the pews with the tiny model jet ski he held pincered between his fingers (look, it would be a _thing,_ okay, he’d _make_ it work).

“Oh, what the hell, what _now?!_ ” The Warden’s first impulse was to look through the paneled windows at his back to see if another riot had broken out. 

No, no more violence than the usual about the yard. A couple of prisoners were being dragged underground by something with snaking purple tendrils beneath one of the western precincts. They went screaming, howling, hands clawing in the dirt until they vanished in the little burrow from which the tentacles had emerged. Blood and parts were upchucked from the tunnel’s innards a few seconds later.

Nothing the Warden would put past the good Doctor. 

“ _Jared!!_ If this is about the budget again, I swear to god—” The Warden paused rather abruptly. Somewhere in the sparking midst of technicolor voltage in the Warden’s brain, something clicked. “Oh! It’s another new prisoner! How _wonderful,_ simply _wonderful!_ ” 

In an instant as quick as a thrown switch, the Warden was all cracked out grins and sparkling eyes, his diorama forgotten. A new prisoner! A new body, a new mind he could bruise and etch with the proper, _super_ values! Another for his collection, however vast it was, each new addition loved as much and as tenderly as the last with hands that wished to hold and protect and reshape and rip in half.

A chill of dark premonition swept through every inmate at that exact same time, though none of them could explain it to one another.

“ _Jaaaaailbooooot!_ ”

His office door imploded, and there was his big boy! 

Smiling that simple smile and content as a cat with a canary, Jailbot chirruped in greeting and held his new convict by the wrist, freshly adorned in an orange jumpsuit. The prisoner was… what the… was that a _paper bag_ over his head? A pair of large round goggles gave the Warden a view of the criminal’s dazed eyes, sure, but that was about all he could see. Yeesh. The Warden’s prisoners weren’t usually much in the way of lookers, but that was almost sad, in a way.

Not that it mattered! 

Because now came an important part of the Warden’s job, the first part of his job when he looked that new felon in the eye. It was one of his _favorite_ parts. And as the Warden leaned in close like a particularly hungry chameleon, he wasn’t disappointed with what he saw in those goggles. 

The discombobulation, the utter confusion, the slap of whiplash they got from this hairpin turn through Superjail’s gates, the Warden loved to chug it like a green apple mojito.

“Well hel _lo,_ there,” the Warden greeted his new criminal with a cordial tip of his hat. His face was split in the gap toothed grin that reached for his ears. “And welcome to Superjail!”

Hanging from Jailbot’s ironclad grip, the prisoner’s head listed from one way to the other, likely fighting off the last waves of dizziness. Natural, really, for new prisoners who were cleaned up and suited for their first meeting with their new warden. 

“Huh… w-wha… how did…?” the prisoner groaned. His free hand, adorned in a yellow glove, rubbed at his temple. “What even _was_ all that? God, I’m gonna be sick…!” 

“No, you’re going to have a second chance at _redemption,_ ” the Warden corrected him happily. “I’m _the Warden,_ and _you’re_ here because _you’re_ a criminal!”

“W-wha… what?!” A bolt of coherence swept back into the younger man’s eyes. “What?! Hold on, hold on, what?! What _is_ this place, really?! This _can’t_ be…!”

“Now, don’t feel bad or beat yourself up too much,” the Warden pressed on, ignoring him. “The system out there’s failed you, that’s all! There’s something deep inside you, something ornery and oily and wriggly in your little black heart that they just! Couldn’t! Pin down!” For emphasis, the Warden’s own chest rippled violently, as if something from a Ridley Scott flick was dying to bust out. He thrust his fist into it and knocked it still again.

His prisoner gaped in fresh horror at him. 

The Warden ignored it. “But _I_ haven’t given up on you,” he continued, as chipper as ever. “Here at _Superjail,_ you’ll get the chance to decide between your criminal ways and the infinitely more gratifying path of the straight-and-narrow! You’ll get every chance you need, for your _last_ chance!”

“W-what the hell,” the prisoner sputtered. “I don’t need a _last chance!_ ”

“Of _course_ you do! Pfft, or else you wouldn’t _be_ here, duh,” the Warden replied, pointing at his temple. “ _Logiiiiic!_ Now, let’s see your file!” 

The Warden stretched his leg out towards his desk, stretched it to inhuman length before he snapped over like a rubber band to the open drawer. He reached in, eager as a kid on Christmas morning, and popped the waiting file out with one hand.

“Hm, Flug Slys,” the Warden read aloud, ignoring the flummoxed silence of his new captive. “Went to college, arrested for a misdemeanor after blowing up the tech lab. Ooh, almost expelled, tsk, tsk, tsk! Always a start down the wrong path! Hm. Did lots of nerdy stuff, blah blah blah, boring, boring—”

“ _Hey!_ I’ll have you know, I have a PhD in diabolical sciences!!” Flug Slys twisted fruitlessly in Jailbot’s claw, eyes narrowed behind those goggles. “So that’s _Doctor_ Flug Slys, _thank_ you! And you can’t just…! You can’t _do this!_ You can’t just _grab people_ and lock them up, even if they _are_ villains!”

“Why not?” the Warden asked without looking up from his reading, his tone perfectly guileless.

Flug spluttered. “W-well, b…! _Because!_ That isn’t how _heroes_ are supposed to _do_ things!” He twisted again with a winded grunt. Jailbot held fast, still smiling. “Heroes follow the _judicial_ system! They don’t just go around grabbing their arch nemesis and throwing them in prison before they’ve even done anything wrong! They do things the _heroic_ way, they do things by the book! _Everyone_ knows that!”

“Pffft, the _book!_ ” The Warden had himself a good cackle at that, doubling over and slapping his knee for good measure. He almost laughed himself to tears. “The _system!_ Ah, but no, seriously, don’t look so surprised! You rapscallions always _do_ try to talk your way out of it at first, when you’re not busy playing dumb, anyway. Say, do me a favor! Take a look outside, and tell me if that looks like the _system_ to you.”

Jailbot, being the gracious and polite thing he was, carted Flug Slys over to the large panel windows that walled the office.

The Warden joined Flug in beholding a landscape of mayhem. Yard after yard of brightly painted towers crowned in giant purple top hats, roller coaster tracks, churning machinery that butchered fleeing inmates with a familiar gap toothed grin bolted on. There was the flutter of creatures with far too many limbs, eyes and mouths, showing too much bone, too much cartilage, having a big ol’ time on their vacation from their respective Dali paintings as their jaws unhinged and their skins peeled back. Blood spattered across a rainbow, that was one way to describe it. 

Flug didn’t have anything smart to say about _that._

He only stared, transfixed at the _beautiful_ chaos raging below.

“This can’t be real,” Flug mumbled. “O-okay, I think I know what’s going on, here. Demencia, she must’ve broken something, I must’ve inhaled too many fumes, this can’t be—”

“Yes, yes, nightmare, hallucination, madness, it’s all about the same!” the Warden said as he returned to his desk. He gestured sharply. “Now pipe down while I finish your file, please.”

“No! You can’t _do_ this! My boss is going to find out, you know who he is, right?!” 

“You’re making it really hard to read.”

“My _boss_ is the one and only—" 

“Ahhh, a graduate of that _Hat_ Academy.” The Warden’s smile was not a pleasant one when he looked up from the file. In fact, it stretched to such inhuman lengths and bared so many teeth that Flug stopped for a second, at a loss for words. The Warden sauntered right up to him, file in hand, the walk of a school master admonishing a renowned troublemaker. “So you just thought throwing your _whole_ life away was a great career choice! _Weeeeell,_ guess you’re just not as smart as you thought!”

The Warden bopped his new inmate over the head with the file.

“Hey! Don’t you condescend to me,” Flug snapped, trying and failing to take a swing right back. “I’ll take apart your little tin can here and I’ll…! I’ll…!”

 _God,_ it was such a hassle taking in criminals that belonged to that Hat club or whatever the hell it was. That particular cut of the Warden’s prisoners was admittedly small, the ones that dressed in those ridiculous costumes with those ridiculous schemes of ruining their worlds with their mischief, but Jailbot could only be in so many places at once. 

In fact, wasn’t Stingray the only Hat Academy graduate imprisoned, here…?

Well! If that was the case, no harm in adding to his collection, right?

“Yes, yes, I’m sure you will,” the Warden cut in. He even went so far as to wink as he shut Flug’s file away in his desk, where it would surely disappear into the ether between Who Knows and Who Cares. “Jailbot, go ahead and show _Doctor_ Flug Slys here to his new roommate!” 

“Hold on! Hold on, just wait a second!” Flug was thrashing around like a possessed cat, now. “Stop! You can’t just…!” 

But Jailbot was already hauling him back the way he’d come in, through the gaping maw he’d carved in the office wall. 

Meaning yes, yes the Warden very much could.

And he could with an upbeat smile, a snap of his fingers, and a little flicker of hope that things might get _interesting._


	2. Fish and Footage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow, you guys really wanted more of this, huh? :D; 
> 
> FIRST OFF I will apologize that this update took so long. To be completely honest? This started as just a silly off-the-cuff thing I whipped up late one night and didn't really expect it to get ANY attention, lmao. Second, well, work got super crazy shortstaffed, so that kinda ate my life for a while. But now that things are calming down, I'm HOPING I'll have more time to write and be silly! 
> 
> So that being said!! I will thank you guys for your patience, and for leaving all the lovely feedback! I'm glad my silly BS is enjoyed by a few! Hopefully a longer chapter will compensate a little!
> 
> also i broke the bag boi a little in this whoops sorry

Black Hat didn’t seem to like what he was hearing.

Now, it was worth bearing in mind that Black Hat was a cynic on a _good_ day. Given this gravelly lay of the land, the tricks to survival were surprisingly simple. Rule number one: don’t fuck up. Rule number two: wave goodbye to insolence as you passed his threshold, or when you dialed his work number. Black Hat’s reach wasn’t constrained to his domicile; he’d strangled an uppity shithead or two through the phoneline (and it was better that you didn’t ask how he did it).

Demencia was _pretty_ darn sure this tumbled into the lap of rule number one. 

Bag Boy had screwed up with security measures around the mansion.

_Again._

The lizard grinned like a coked-up loon as Black Hat stomped around the still smoking ruins of Flug’s laboratory. 505, with scorched shocks of fur standing out like cowlicks in the odd place, was rather nervously relaying the events to their employer. 

Problem there was that 505 and the now reportedly missing Flug were the only ones in the house fluent in bear.

“Nerd’s in troooouble,” Demencia drawled, all jaunty singsong. She contentedly perched on the upturned wreck of Flug’s worktable, feet dangling over the edge. “Nerd’s in troooouble! Nerd’s! In! Trouble!! Nerd’s! In! Trouble!”

“Explain it again,” Black Hat demanded, though it was clear his patience was running extraordinarily thin. “ _Slowly_ and with _some_ coherence _,_ you idiot!”

505 fumbled, mouth flapping in panic. “Rrrrr! Rah-rer- _rawr-_ bawr!” A frantic motion with his large paws. “Bawooooor! Bawr, rrrrr ber harr bawr rrrr! Bawr?”

“That wasn’t slow _or_ coherent!” Black Hat turned, his look impatient. “ _Demencia!_ ”

Her singsong had devolved into a playoffs chant, kept in time with the thump of her feet. “Nerd fucked up! _Nerd fucked up!_ **_Nerd fucked up!_** ”

“ ** _DEMENCIA!!_** ”

He rose before her in an oily column of smoke, and she was positively smitten into silence. She could see pure rage burning like ancient village fires behind that monocle, hell fire, an unbridled power _worse_ than hell in the gleaming curve of those fangs. Those large brows furrowed, reducing the one eye she could see into a serpentine slit. And when he stood with his back so straight, he loomed with such _menace_ that Demencia’s knees would have juddered into water.

 _God,_ he was so _dreamy_ when he looked _murderous_.

“ _You_ had to have seen _something,_ ” Black Hat snarled, almost accusingly. “You may be the poster child for why post-birth abortion should be legalized, but even a broken clock is right twice a day! You _have_ to have your moments when you’re not bloody _useless!_ ”

Demencia sighed with longing. “God I love when you _get like this,_ it’s so _kinky._ ”

Black Hat’s scowl deepened. An angry hiss allowed a forked tongue to flicker out between those deadly teeth. “You’re going to be kinked when I twist your skeleton like a fucking pretzel inside your body if I don’t have a face and name in the next **_twenty goddamn seconds!!_** ” 

With the clouds of love breaking, in those rare moments of lucidity Demencia had for survival’s sake, she chanced an easygoing smile back at him. “ _I_ didn’t see what happened, ‘cause, y’know, I had stuff to do!”

“Doing _what?_ Guzzling one of those bacon-Snackpack-Ramen smoothies and riding out another stroke?”

“Excuse you, that was just _one time,_ ” Demencia fired back, indignantly folding her arms.

“And what a _lovely_ afternoon that was. Until the seizures started.” Black Hat chanced a small grin, the ever wistful look of a nostalgic old timer turned inward. “ _Then_ it was funny.”

“Eh, I don’t really remember much about those. But seriously, dude, did you think to check the security cameras?”

Black Hat paused, looking nothing short of thunderstruck for a second.

Meaning no, he hadn’t.

“Of **_course_** I did, you _idiot,_ ” Black Hat muttered gruffly. “I was about to **_do_** that, and then the… stock market.”

Demencia knotted her brows. “What?”

“ ** _Business_** matters. **_Evil_** business. Wall Street is one of my most lucrative subsidiaries, right next to Livejournal.”

Demencia stifled a giggle with a wide grin that clenched her teeth. As drop-dead gorgeous as he was when he was pissed (or mildly agitated, or apathetic, or hungry, or thirsty, or sinisterly overjoyed, the list _obviously_ went on), her instincts had only sharpened since her modifications. Whatever she couldn’t put a finger on, the coldblooded drive of lizard genetics gave silent alert. 

They were climbing second gear right about now, knowing that Black Hat was near an edge where rule two might come into play if she wasn’t careful.

“Okay! Come on, Bag Boy’s security set up is this way,” she said, hiking a thumb back over her shoulder before she promptly hopped off the worktable and began walking. As Black Hat fell into step alongside her, 505 let out a whooshing sigh of relief in their passage. “Over here!”

“You’re sure,” Black Hat said, in a tone that brooked doubt.

“Totally! I screw around with it all the time!”

Oh, yes. Flug had plenty of enjoyable footage of Demencia hanging upside down in front of his fancy schmancy cameras, either showcasing her Black Hat fanart, making faces, or just letting the nerd enjoy a nice five minute middle finger that obstructed his view of that particular quadrant.

“If _that’s_ the whole reason for _this_ bollocks right now, I’m going to rip down the nearest camera and give you an endoscopy through your eye sockets.”

Now she couldn’t have helped the giggle if she tried. “I _knew_ you were into vore! So you _do_ look at my deviantart gallery!!” 

“ ** _What?!_** ”

***

Flug was settling rather well into life on the inside, if one was willing to chance a willowy meaning of ‘rather well’.

And if that contorted meaning entailed huddling like a little bitch in the corner of a gray brick cell, knees up, arms tightly wrapped around himself, then sure! You bet your sweet bippy he was settling in! 

His roommate, as it happened, wasn’t much for conversation. In fact, he’d been sitting silently on his bunk for the past hour or so, watching Flug with an unreadable expression and a gaze that pierced through his glasses. He was a resolute stone of a man, reminiscent of an icon from a Clint Eastwood flick ready to pull iron in lieu of whistling Dixie.

A bright yellow canary sat on his right shoulder, but it hardly dented the other man’s oddly disquieting presence. In fact, the canary’s beady little eyes seemed nearly soulless, save for a pale wink of what might have been bloodlust.

Flug could catch _that_ kind of look anywhere, even in the most innocuous places.

To make matters worse? A heavyset man in the cell their opposite hadn’t quite stopped watching him since that _stupid tin can_ had tossed him in here. He’d hoped that the passage of time would chip away some of his inherent novelty, that his fellow prisoners would quickly forget about the new fish and go on with the mundanities of confined life.

The heavy guy was panting as his hands tightened around the bars. Knuckles white, tongue lolling.

Nope. 

Flug was not allowed nice things, such was the decree of the entire goddamn multiverse, apparently.

“Well hey there, little fella,” the heavy guy wheezed, in a breathy falsetto that might have been funny, any other time. It was the kind of voice that came ironically out of big guys like him, big guys usually nicknamed ‘Slim’ to hammer the joke home. “Almost time to hit the yard! You new, here?” Grinning, he furrowed into the belly button winking out from under his shirt, a size or two too small. “You wanna punch a mouth hole in that bag?”

Flug threw himself back with a horrified yelp. His back struck solid gray brick, and suddenly, the walls around him seemed less natural. They felt like fingers, closing around him in the world’s largest stone fist.

 _Goddamnit,_ the thought sped through him like a bullet train in his skull. _Goddamnit, goddamnit, goddamnit!! Goddamnit, this is my life, until they find me!_

Except without even a word, never mind an explanation, his roommate casually rose to his feet. The canary chirruped, its song questioning.

The man still said nothing, only awarding the bird a grim nod. Apparently it was all the answer it needed, as the canary fluttered off with a certainty that Flug found a little eerie for a creature with a brain the size of a cashew. Of course, he reminded himself, birds did get a _bit_ of an unfair reputation compared to their feline and canine counterparts, what with the ‘bird brain’ stereotype. And canaries, he again reminded himself, were actually quite trainable for…

…slipping easily between the bars…

…flying into the next cell…

…seizing on Slim with the ferocity of a hornet, a falcon trained for blood…

Flug shut his eyes just as the other prisoner began howling, but the scientist hadn’t escaped mentally unscathed. He’d seen the canary dive right into the other man’s stubbled face, feet extended, tiny claws shredding flesh. There had been a geyser of blood erupting like Old Faithful from the man’s eye socket. The eye spilled out like pus from a zit. A rubbery stretch of the man’s tongue hung limp in the canary’s beak. 

He would be seeing that in plenty of nightmares to come, and for his own sake, he kept his eyes clenched tightly shut until the screaming died into nothing. 

The other prisoners grunted, awarded the sight cursory glances, but shrugged and returned to patiently awaiting their time in the yard.

“Um… thanks, I-I think,” Flug said without opening his eyes. “I, uh… I appreciate it…?”

No response. Only the damp squelch of meat, and god he didn’t want to know what that noise was, only the imagination is a far keener tool than people realize, and it was needling him, and he cracked open an eye, and he saw the clotted white jelly of the inmate’s eye spread like the waters of a bath on the canary’s underside, and he was about to go back to cowering in his respective corner when his roommate extended a cigarette.

A smoke.

How long had it been since Flug had tried a smoke? A pretty long while, back when caffeine wasn’t cutting it because it agitated his anxiety but meth had only seemed like a good idea for ten seconds.

“Um…” Flug reached out with a trembling hand. Whatever his reason to turn down a smoke (cancer, asthma, heart disease, the statistics were all there in black and white), he knew ‘no’ was not a good answer here. “Thank you,” he said instead, as his roommate fished a lighter out of his shoe and flicked his thumb on the wheel.

He drew in nicotine that, admittedly, steadied him a bit once he’d fought back the urge to cough.

“Thanks,” Flug sighed, slumping in a tired heap against the wall. God, he was exhausted. “H-hey, uh… listen, I, uh… I can probably repay you, somehow. Uh, my boss should be along to bust me outta here any minute, now.” Or at least, that was the impression unless Black Hat decided to let him squirm a few days while holding a summer sale to get rid of warehouse stock. That would be equal bits practical and evil, which was terrifying. “So, I’d like to think that he’ll probably initiate a jailbreak or at least a riot here, while he was at it?”

His roommate puffed out clouds, vaguely listening. He gestured for Flug to go on.

“Black Hat? Maybe you’ve heard of him?”

Both the man and bird _looked_ at him with keen interest. 

Flug grinned under that paper bag, somewhat encouraged. “Or if he doesn’t, I know that _Demencia_ probably will! I know you gotta feel like getting some payback against that lunatic warden, right?”

His roommate smiled. It was not a particularly pleasant smile, and in fact, if he were seeing it in an alleyway unarmed, Flug would be prepared to scream like a five year old. 

“So what d’ya say we cut a deal, then?” Flug rose to his feet, caught back in an old element, now. Still smiling, he extended his hand. “You and your, uh… fine… bird, keep me in one piece until Black Hat gets here, and I’ll make sure you get a taste of freedom again. Uh. S-sound, uh… sound good?”

_Way to tie it all together, slick._

But the other man pondered it, mouth tight around the filter… before offering it to the bird for a quick puff. Good god. 

Flug nervously pulled another drag off of his. If he had to go without his gadgets or any potential weapons and he couldn’t arrange _something_ in here, he would be what we in the business might call good and fucked. Empty and still trembling a bit, his hand hung in midair awkwardly. 

The so far nameless other man took it in a firm grip that hurt his fingers, but Flug didn’t dare squeak in that pain for the few seconds it took. 

He greedily leaped on the sign for what it was: there was still mercy to be had in the multiverse after all, even for bottom-feeding garbage like him. 

Karma could eat a _dick._

***

Time in the yard came sooner than Flug would have liked, but he shuffled out among the other inmates just the same, a bit more content now that he had protection to cling to. He felt leering eyes, grinning teeth, lewd cackles lashing over his back like a midday whipping. They could all eat it, so far as Flug figured. Hanging loose in the nameless man’s shadow, sticking close to the bird, he had what he needed now.

Now it was just a matter of the waiting game… and hoping that Black Hat didn’t opt for that make-‘em-squirm scenario he’d stumbled across earlier.

He hung back in his roommate’s shadow near the basketball court, watching as some of them opted for lifting weights like the brawny brainless oafs they undoubtedly were. As if all that _muscle_ actually _meant_ anything. They were locked up, worms under the treads.

Not that Flug was much better off, but still.

Just as he’d hoped, his new protection was working out without too many hitches. The other inmates circled him, some of them even threw him a threatening gesture or two. All bluster, of course. They took one look at who was standing right by him, and they kept their distance, jeered at him, and left it at that.

Flug sighed. “Y’know, this actually isn’t so bad,” he remarked cheerfully, spirits bright as another inmate went strutting off. 

“Wait ‘til you’re alone, fish,” another inmate sneered, “I’ll stomp your fuckin’ head in and eat it out of that doggy bag!”

“I-I mean, I’d rather _not_ be in jail, of course,” Flug went on, tugging his collar a bit. “But it’s not as bad as other villains say it is! Free food, room and board, all on the taxpayer’s dollar. Makes you wonder who the _real_ villains are.” He folded his arms, smirking underneath that bag. “At least when _we_ rob you, we’re straightforward about it. Am I right?”

His roommate shrugged and lit up another cigarette. The canary gave a noncommittal chirp as it took its turn at the filter.

_All righty, then._

In spite of himself, Flug couldn’t help the most passing of judgments. Call him what you would, but at least he didn’t encourage such impractical, unhealthy habits in 505.

And in fact, he was wondering how much harm it could do to bring up the statistics to his roommate – statistics that he couldn’t see boding well _especially_ for a bird so small – when _it_ crept up over the yard wall. 

_It_ was the only fitting name Flug could give such a creature. With claws the size of bridge girders, it hauled itself up from whatever pit it called home. It was a mountain of pebbled gray flesh, almost reptilian, except its shape was unlike any biped Flug could remember studying even across the multiverse. The best way to describe it was a _doughnut,_ a massive _doughnut_ of flesh that, in odd intervals, fell back in slobbery folds. Mouths and enormous human teeth lined the edges.

Flug counted nine garage-sized mouths, all of them snapping and gibbering (some in snatches of other languages), forked tongues whipping out past craggy lips. And that was just scaling the beast with his eyes alone. 

“What the _actual fuck_ is that?!” Flug screamed, unable to help himself. He had a sickening feeling where this was headed.

One of the other inmates lifting on the weight bench sat up and rolled his eyes. “Aw, for fuck’s sake,” the guy grumbled. “Just _gotta_ be Tuesday, don’t it?”

All nine visible mouths grinning, the beast dove avidly over the wall. It landed with a graceless crash in the yard, sending tremors up through the soles of Flug’s sneakers until his knees threatened to give like jelly. The scientist could only look on in horror as the gargantuan thing began to literally _roll,_ roll like the doughnut it was with all those jaws gnashing.

The inmates were already scattering. Screaming, flailing, and for a select few of them it didn’t do any good.

Teeth hitched on torsos and legs with the ease of a grater on a hunk of Roquefort.

Flug was too busy running and screaming to stare for much longer than it took to catch the first body contorting in the fourth or fifth mouth. He could remember the man went shrieking, his body twisting like a pretzel as it broke over those teeth, but not much else. With every step he tore in, ribs already aching over a stitch, he could only bear one coherent thought in mind. 

_Just gotta be Tuesday, don’t it?_

“Get me out of here…!” Flug could barely hear himself sobbing over the death cries of slower prisoners behind him. “Get me out of here, get me out of here, _get me out of here…!_ ”

Flug had no way of knowing it in that moment, sputtering himself close to tears in his new life as an ant under a magnifying glass, but one of the top-hatted towers held an audience.

The Warden leaned back in a plush leather chair with a bowl of chocolate-drizzled popcorn, face split with a grin.

_***_

“There we go! That’s it! That’s when the robot charged in and grabbed him!” Demencia said cheerfully. She pointed out the imposing robot as it charged onscreen, seemingly from out of nowhere. They were watching it on one monitor of many in a surveillance bank Flug had situated in a closed off chamber. Probably for dramatic effect; the nerd likely got the idea from Lex Luthor or some other scientist that wasn’t a total geek.

To her left, 505 let out a disdainful whine as he ducked behind his paws like the two-ton chicken he was. 

From her right, Black Hat awarded her a flat look. “We _know,_ you idiot. That’s the fourth time you’ve rolled this goddamn footage.”

“And it just gets _funnier_ the more I play it!”

“Yes, it does. Funniest thing I’ve seen all week. But it’s also wasting company time, so this will be the _last_ time we watch it.”

“Awww…”

They ran through it once more, watching the nerd get his ass handed to him as the tin can cuffed him and hauled him off. Demencia scoffed. Flug was no cage-match contender no matter what way you spun it, but to get taken down by _that_ tin can?

Black Hat sighed as the footage blipped into a haze of static, and it was the sigh of every exasperated father receiving a call from the police in local human history. “Fuck me,” he muttered, before shooting Demencia a withering look and adding, “I will beat you with your own limbs after I’ve ripped them off if you utter so much as a word. I swear to everything unholy, I _do not_ have the patience for _this_ shit and _your_ shit coagulated into one corn-riddled throatful of utter _shit,_ are we clear?”

Acquainted with the limit, Demencia settled for a lewd snicker instead. “Fine, fine. Too easy, anyway. So, you know who that hunk of junk belongs to?” she asked, jerking a thumb at the monitor.

“Yes, yes, it’s the help to one of my old summer _haunts,_ as it were.” Black Hat’s mouth quirked into a wilier (and far more pleasing) smile. “ _Superjail._ Bit of a hole in the wall that you’ll miss if you don’t hang a right out of Dimension 56-12, but at least it’s far more _interesting_ than the prison system here, I’ll grant it that.” 

“Prison system?” Demencia balked, her face contorting to one of outright disgust. “What the hell, you helped out a _prison?_ ”

“No. I’d go there with a few snacks to watch the matinee. It was _always_ a bloody good way to kill a weekend.”

Demencia pouted, though at least she knew better than to roll her eyes and risk her employer’s ire. “C’mon, I’ve watched my fair share of prison scraps. And sure, most of ‘em are hilarious, but they’re not _that_ entertaining.”

“Oh it was a hell of a lot more than a good shank in the yard,” Black Hat said, that smile stretching into a jackal’s grin. A wildness flashed in those eyes that Demencia drank as if she’d been lost in the desert, and then it was gone as suddenly as it appeared. The grin shrank into his more typical scowl, all good humor extinguished. “But cutting into my company’s time and profit crosses the line. Not that that _moron_ isn’t to blame for letting it happen, which I’ll go ahead and dock out of his pay.”

“Oooh! Oooh! Can I have his pay?!” Demencia squealed. “For… the rescue mission we’re gonna go on to save him, I mean. And _maybe_ the next volume of the Blood Girls Fang Moon manga. Not necessarily in that order.”

Black Hat folded his arms. “No. In fact, I think I’ll give myself another bonus for putting up with the rest of you. And as far as rescue mission goes, it’s not as if I’m going to send only _you_ two along. For Hell’s sake, look at you.” He gestured to 505, who was already shaking, whimpering, eyes glittering with fresh tears. “That one’s useless even _with_ Flug around, and you’re _you,_ so—”

“ _Holy shit!!_ Black Hat’s coming with _me_ on a _mission!!_ ” Demencia’s expression could have shamed three hundred watt light bulbs as fireworks proceeded to burst in her chest. It was all she could do to keep from swooning right into him (and risk losing an extremity when he was _this_ agitated). “Us, working _together!!_ Finally, just as fate always _wanted!!_ ” She spun on her heel, too starstruck to notice Black Hat’s snarl. “This will be the true beginning of our _love_ as we _burn_ the place to the ground! And we’ll feel the fire in our _souls,_ and in the heat of the moment we’ll finally realize our true feelings for— _gack!!_ ”

She was cut off, none too gently, by the ink-black tendril closing like a steel coil around her windpipe.

Black Hat seemed to wait patiently until her vision dipped into gray tunnels before speaking. “Let me make something clear to you. I’m coming with you idiots because your _incompetence_ is going to cost me even _more_ money than I’m losing now because of _Flug’s_ incompetence. The rate we’re going, I’ll dock _everyone’s_ pay and get myself a nice brunch this weekend after I burn down a nunnery, fuck it, but in the meantime? Don’t look so bloody _pleased_ with yourself for being a second-rate lackey. It’s pathetic, even for _you._ ”

Demencia fought her hardest to gasp in the slightest whistle of air… then tossed a thumbs-up at him, complete with a loopy grin. 

Rolling his eyes, Black Hat let her fall into a gasping heap on the floor. “Come on, then,” he snarled. He turned to snap his teeth at 505, prompting the bear to leap a good three feet off the ground with a pitchy yelp. “What are _you_ standing around for, bear?! **Go get one of the ships warmed up, already!!** ” 

“ _Bawwwrrr!!_ ” 505 sped off in a fright towards the mansion hangar, where Flug kept his flying contraptions. 

Rubbing her sore neck, Demencia readily fell in step behind her boss. 

“I’m still gonna _thiiiink_ it,” she said, in a hoarse and gleeful whisper.

**Author's Note:**

> before you ask, no.
> 
> no i don't know what the hell i'm doing lol


End file.
